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Anti-Islamophobia motion puts Tories on the horns of a dilemma: Paul Wells

Most Fridays, I appear as an all-purpose pundit-for-hire on Radio-Canada’s popular noon-hour radio current-affairs show out of Montreal. Five days after the massacre at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec, one of the topics was, “Will anything change?”

It was a fair question. Justin Trudeau and Philippe Couillard, the Quebec premier, had spoken powerfully at a Montreal memorial service for the six victims, cut down at their mosque during prayers. The Bloc Québécois, which campaigned in the 2015 election on an ad that showed an animated oil derrick transforming into a hijab — it’s a period piece; you kind of had to be there — had decorously pulled the ad off YouTube in the wake of the mass killing.

Society is complex. There are people who didn’t need to change because they had no ill will in their hearts to begin with. There are others who are honestly frightened in the wake of violent attacks around the world by people who pledge allegiance to Daesh’s perverted teachings. And there are people looking for a hook to hang their hate from. The groups are large, their opinions entrenched, the likelihood of changing many minds not great.

And, crucially, the political calculation over the benefit of appealing to one or another of these groups isn’t likely to change much either, in the short term. So politics around issues of faith and terrorism isn’t likely to change durably.

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Often in my line of work, one spends a lot of time wishing one could draw different conclusions.

Anyway, fast forward to this week. The House of Commons is considering a motion from Liberal MP Iqra Khalid (Mississauga—Erin Mills) that would, if adopted, have the House of Commons “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.” A Commons committee would study ways to reduce “systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia” and report within eight months.

Khalid’s motion is full of buzz-words (“whole-of-government . . . community-centred . . . holistic . . . evidence-based”). But a few nutcase bloggers promptly started claiming things for this motion that are simply not true.

It’s not a law. It would be an expression of MPs’ opinion. The motion makes no mention of sharia law. It would not lead to penalties for the expression of any opinion. When I was at Maclean’s magazine, the House passed a motion complaining about our journalism. We kept doing journalism.

The Conservative Party, leaderless and drifting as five serious leadership candidates — Andrew Scheer, Erin O’Toole, Mike Chong, Maxime Bernier, Lisa Raitt — fight for attention amid the flailing of more than a half-dozen cranks and desperate losers, let the blogs define the debate. So now Iqra Khalid is receiving a near-constant stream of hate correspondence and the leadership candidates, including some I named here, are finding exquisitely delicate excuses for refusing to support her motion.

Because nothing changes, politics is not happening only on the Conservative side. The Trudeau government has decided to support Khalid’s motion, indeed to champion it with a concerted communications effort in the middle of what was already a busy week. Mélanie Joly has been installed as the motion’s lead cabinet-level advocate. A proposed substitute Conservative motion, which mimics Khalid’s except that it does not contain the word “Islamophobia” and instead lists a gorgeous assortment of the world’s major faiths, has been deemed watered-down by Joly. The Liberals won’t support it.

The NDP is supporting both the Conservative and the Liberal motions. Any MP can do the same. The Liberals could, too. But they want to perch the Conservatives on the horns of a dilemma, and you would too in their place, because it’s a pretty good replica of the dilemma that every party faced during the 2015 election: campaign on fear or campaign against it?

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In that campaign, Kellie Leitch and Chris Alexander, two Conservative cabinet ministers, gave a news conference in which they asked Canadians to rat out their neighbours if they suspected them of “barbaric cultural practices.” Alexander lost his seat. Today, no Conservative will admit to thinking that news conference was a good idea.

Leitch and Alexander, now running to lead the Conservatives, were guests at a grotesque rally on Wednesday of people who think today, as they did in 2015, that campaigning on fear is the way to go.

Today, as in 2015, the Conservatives face a choice. They are free to keep making the same choice. They get to decide whether they want to be closer to Iqra Khalid or to the people bombarding her with hate. I’m sure they’ll let us know when they’ve decided.

Paul Wells is a national affairs writer. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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